FIX FOUND! My bds.exe is no longer insisting it is run with Administrator privileges.
This area of Windows is new to me, so perhaps my analysis and solution below are incorrect. Please be gentle on me if I'm wrong about all this!
I know of four ways that Windows determines whether an exe requires UAC Admin elevation (Run as Admin).
1. The flag/checkbox on a desktop icon's Property screen's Security tab
2. The standard registry.
3. An Application Compatibility database (?) described by wosHub (or is this just the registry as edited by Microsoft's Application Compatibility Administrator?)
4. The .exe's manifest
I found an easy way to view and edit the registry keys using Nirsoft's AppCompatibilityView (https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/app_compatibility_view.html) (Of course, RegEdit would work too, but you'd have to know all the fields and flags to do it manually like that)
Nirsoft's AppCompatibilityView showed that the registry contained an entry that was forcing Windows to launch bds.exe with administrative rights. (See attached screen capture of the Nirsoft app)
After I deleted that entry, the bds.exe Ran as Invoker and did not require UAC elevation. I believe that the D12 installer must have added an entry to the registry that forced UAC elevation for administrative rights. I don't know why the installer would do that. Nor do I know how else that entry could have occurred.
After I deleted the registry entry using Nirsoft's app, I uninstalled (thoroughly with Revo) and re-installed D12.
Now, when I launched the bds.exe, it started without the UAC popup. But... I then got: Exception Exception in module coreide290.bpl at 0000F3B3. Internal Error: AppIniFile was not initialized.
If I ran as Admin, I did not get that error. Other than one unresolved RSP in the old JIRA database, I could find nothing about this error. I couldn't find a file on my machine with the name "AppIniFile." And, Procmon didn't give me any further information about what was going on either.
I was able to follow the instructions at https://woshub.com/how-to-disable-uac-for-specific-applications/ to create a batch file that when run, causes the bds.exe to run with RunAsInvoker. I wasn't happy with a batch file sitting between my keyboard and launching bde.exe. (For example, what would happen if I double-clicked on a .dproj in the Windows Explorer? The .bat file wouldn't be run so bds.exe would again require UAC elevation.)
As an alternate approach, I followed the instructions on the above woshub page to create a registry key that would flag bds.exe to be always RunAsInvoker. Here's the key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Embarcadero\\Studio\\23.0\\bin\\bds.exe"="RunAsInvoker"
You could do the same thing more easily with Nirsoft's app using its Action menu or right-clicking on app there.
I did not take the time to try the Application Compatibility Toolkit method (as described at woshub) to modify the Windows compatibility database.
Like I said, this is all new to me... and apparently it's new to most people. I don't if my thinking is correct, but bds.exe is launching properly... at least for the time being.
If this write-up helped you solve a problem you've been having, DM me to let me know it was worth the time I spent writing it out here!
Tom